For the next two days, Jinny tried desperately to find some way of stopping them sending her to Duninver School.
She went to see Miss Broughton, who had been her teacher at Glenbost school.
“So you see, I can’t go to the hostel. I can’t,” she finished, when she had explained the circumstances to Miss Broughton.
“It is maddening,” Miss Broughton had agreed. “It all seemed to be working out so well for you—the new comprehensive opening up at just the right moment. I’m very sorry, but there is nothing I can do to change things.”
“Couldn’t I come back here for another year,” pleaded Jinny.
“You certainly could not. A whole year stagnating when you’re ready to go on to a new school with a proper Art Department. Think of the other children you’ll meet and the new friends you’ll make. You wouldn’t want to listen to Dolina talking about all the new things she’s doing while you were still coming here.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind. Truly I wouldn’t mind,” declared Jinny.
“You think you wouldn’t now, but you would by Christmas time. You would hate it. Anyway, the Education Committee wouldn’t let you stay here.”
Jinny grunted in disgust. She supposed that she better go and speak to the Education Committee herself.
She borrowed a matching scarf, handbag and gloves from Petra, put on her best skirt and jacket, and that afternoon she hitched a lift into Glenbost and caught the bus to Inverburgh.
“You want to see the Education Committee?” said the girl in the Education Offices, looking at Jinny suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
“It’s about the new school at Inverburgh not being ready in time.”
“Oh, yes,” said the girl. “We’ve had a lot of complaints about that.”
“Nothing like mine,” stated Jinny. “I must see someone.”
“Perhaps Mr. Scott would have a minute to speak to you,” said the girl, lifting a phone on her desk.
“He’ll see you now,” she said as she replaced the receiver. “Come this way.”
She showed Jinny into a room furnished with filing cabinets and a large desk. Behind the desk sat a fat man.
“Sit down, little lady,” he said. “And tell me what’s troubling your little head.” So that Jinny knew at once that he wouldn’t be any help. No one who called her a little lady could possibly be any use.
Mr. Scott fumbled with the papers on his desk while Jinny tried to explain why she couldn’t go to Duninver.
“Dear me, we do have problems,” he said when she had finished. “I think the best thing you can do is to go straight home and ask your father to explain to you why your education is more important than bumping around on top of your gee-gee.”
Jinny stared at him in fascinated disgust.
“But one thing I can tell you, when the new term starts, you and all the other first-year pupils from your district will be attending Duninver School. There is no possibility of the school in Inverburgh opening in September. Gallop off with you now. I can’t waste any more of my time over such rubbish.”
Jinny sat on the bus going back to Glenbost, seeing nothing, thinking nothing. A heavy certainty was squatting on her—the certainty that when the new term started she would be at Duninver School.
Back at Finmory she changed, caught up Shantih and rode over to the field where their jumps were. The wooden boxes were still scattered from the night when Shantih had smashed her way through them; the night when Jinny had still been going to Inverburgh School; when the only thing that mattered was building a better show jumping course; before the archaeologists had come to Finmory.
The thought of the Brachan excavation made Jinny gather up Shantih’s reins and send her cantering round the field, for last night she had dreamed the same nightmare. High and clear, Shantih soared over the jumps, while Jinny sat tight in the saddle, concentrating her whole mind on her horse.
That night the dream was waiting for Jinny again. It seemed that the second she closed her eyes she was back fighting her way through the marsh, while the Red Horse reared on the edge of the skyline, questing the air with trumpeting nostrils, his metal hooves sundering the earth, his yellow eyes searching, searching, while Jinny screamed.
“You’ve the banana face,” said Mr. MacKenzie the next morning, when Jinny went over to the farm to see him. “It’s that jumping that’s going for your liver. I was warning you for it.”
“I’m sick with worry,” said Jinny.
“Och now, I’m sorry to be hearing that. It’ll be to do with the Inverburgh school, no doubt, and yourself having to be for Duninver with that fancy sister of yours.”
“Yes,” agreed Jinny. “That’s exactly what it is. I don’t know what I’m going to do with Shantih.”
“I’m no surprised to be hearing that.”
“If they make me go to Duninver, please would you take her? Just be Monday to Friday, really only Monday night to Friday morning. You’d only have to feed her and muck her out, put her in her field and bring her in again at night. I’d pay you for it, Please, please, Mr. MacKenzie.”
“That I will not. I haven’t the time to be carrying on with a useless brute like that one,” said Mr. MacKenzie contemptuously. “Was I not telling you from the beginning that she was not the horse for the likes of yourself to be having? That Pippen now, he’s the horse for a lassie, not a wild beast like yon.”
“Thank you,” said Jinny. “Let your ‘no’ be ‘no’. Enough.” And, carrying Finmory’s milk, she trudged back home.
Petra was practising. Jinny hung around until she stopped and asked what Jinny wanted.
“Does anyone from Glenbost or Ardtallon travel to Duninver each day?” Jinny asked. “Maybe someone whose father has a car and works there?”
“Why?” said Petra.
“I thought I could travel with them.”
“You’re not allowed to. You must stay in the hostel, it’s a rule.” Petra returned to her practising.
“No,” said Mike, when Jinny asked him again if he would look after Shantih.
“Go on,” said Jinny. “Please, please.”
“I can’t,” said Mike. “It’s not as if she’s going to be sold or shot or anything desperate. Then it would be different. Miss Tuke will look after her well. It’s not long since you were wanting someone to school her for you.”
“With me not for me,” said Jinny. “And now I’m teaching her to jump I can’t have someone else riding her.”
“No,” said Mike.
Jinny went into the pottery and waited until Ken appeared. He sat down at the wheel and began to throw pots with quick, deft movements. Kelly lay, hearthrug at his feet, watching him.
“Do you really think you’ll go to Holland?” Jinny asked, not looking at Ken.
“Anyone else but Bob Schultz and the answer would be ‘no’,” said Ken. “But I’ll go for him. Heard him on the telly once. A plastic woman interviewing him and asking all the wrong questions. She said wasn’t he afraid of running out of new ideas for his pottery and he stood up—he’s a huge giant of a man, about six foot—and shouted, ‘Lady, my head is like a furnace, burning, blazing. My hands can’t move fast enough to keep up with the ideas that come leaping through me.’ ”
“Oh,” said Jinny politely. She didn’t want to hear about Bob Schultz.
“So that’s why I must go and work with him. The disciple approaches the master.”
“When are you going?”
“Going up to London next weekend with Nell. Probably Friday. She thinks he’ll want me for the winter. Says he often takes on an apprentice during the winter when he’s at his pottery in Amsterdam.”
Jinny picked up a lump of clay and began to mould it into different shapes. It wasn’t a bit like Ken to be so enthusiastic about anything. Normally he said: “ ‘Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes and the grass grows by itself ’.”
so she knew that he must really want to go. It wasn’t just a notion.
Jinny began to make her clay into a pony shape. It wasn’t up to Ken to say that he wouldn’t stay and look after Shantih for her. It was up to her not to ask. She gave her pony a shaggy mane and thick tail. When she had finished she found a corner on the windowsill and left him there.
Then she ran out to Shantih, saddled her up and rode her down to the bay. The Hortons’ tent was a bright square against the grass—but there was no sign of Sue or her family. On the sands, Jinny let Shantih gallop in wide circles, encouraging her to go faster, yelling into the sea silence, and, when Shantih bucked, encouraging her to misbehave. Then Jinny cantered up to the field where the jumps were and rode Shantih at them.
“Go on! Go on!” cried Jinny as Shantih flew over them. She jumped her round again and again. When she was jumping Shantih Jinny forgot about the Red Horse, forgot about Duninver School and the thought of Miss Tuke taking Shantih away from her. There was nothing but the flying speed of her horse.
In the afternoon, Jinny went up to her room and shut her door with a bang so that her family would know she wasn’t to be disturbed. Even at the very top of the house Jinny could still hear Petra’s playing.
“Thank goodness,” Jinny thought, checking through her window to make sure that Shantih was safely in her field, then flinging herself flat on top of her bed, “her exam is on Saturday, then we’ll get some peace.”
Mike was going to Stopton tomorrow to stay with a friend until the end of the holidays. Jinny thought he was mad.
“I don’t really want to go,” Mike had said.
“Then don’t,” said Jinny.
“But I promised I’d go back and stay with them. I didn’t go last summer and I didn’t go at Easter, and now his mother keeps on writing to Mum saying when am I coming and how much David is looking forward to seeing me again. I’d rather be here, but I suppose I’d better go.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Doesn’t really matter,” Mike had said. “It’s only for a fortnight, and then we’ll be back at school.”
“A fortnight!” thought Jinny, and in a sudden panic she jumped off her bed, brought her cash box down from the top of her wardrobe and emptied its contents out on to the top of her bed. She was saving up to buy a lungeing rein for Shantih. Nell Storr bought her pictures and sold them in her shop, but really Jinny wasn’t very keen on selling her pictures to Nell. Once Nell had bought them, Jinny never saw them again.
“Money,” thought Jinny, counting out the eleven pounds that was in her cash box. “I’ll need money whatever happens. If Dolina knows a farmer in Glenbost who would look after Shantih during the week I’d need to pay him, and I’d need more than eleven pounds.”
She would need to do more drawings for Nell. Jinny swept the money off the edge of the bed into the cash box. Quickly wrapped it up again in its Sellotape and put it back on the top of her wardrobe. She found her drawing pad, pastels and paints, and, sitting down on the floor, she began to draw.
“Each drawing two pounds,” Jinny thought. “Six drawings enough to keep Shantih for a week. If I can find someone in Glenbost who will keep her.”
A lump choked in Jinny’s throat. She blew her nose hard.
“Each picture two pounds,” she told herself again. “Six pictures one week’s keep. Twenty-four pictures, one month.”
Jinny forced herself to go on painting as fast as she could. Nell had said that her customers liked the drawings of Shantih best, so Jinny painted Shantih—Shantih’s head, Shantih grazing, Shantih galloping and Shantih jumping. If a bit of her drawing didn’t look quite right, Jinny smudged it over. She drew grass round Shantih’s hooves so that she didn’t have to waste time with difficult fetlocks and pasterns; she painted swirling manes and tails to cover up necks that were too long or hocks that bent in an odd way.
All the drawings were hopeless and Jinny knew it. Even the ones that looked all right weren’t of Shantih. They could have been any chestnut Arab. Normally, Jinny would have torn them all up and gone for a ride.
“They’re very good,” she told herself, arranging them in rows of weeks and months. “As good as lots of the pictures you see in shops. Better. Nell will never know the difference. She doesn’t know anything about horses.”
Jinny shuffled the pictures into a pile, not wanting to have to look at them again for they were all so bad.
She wandered through to the other half of her room, feeling gritty and cross with herself. Absorbed in her painting, she had forgotten about the Red Horse.
The glowing yellow eyes were waiting, glaring out at her. Jinny stood still, staring back at the Horse. It was a rough, crude drawing. The Horse’s legs were too long. Its head was out of proportion to the rest of its body. But it was alive. It crashed through the branches straight at Jinny. The yellow circles of its eyes commanded her.
Jinny brought paper and pastels, and, kneeling on the floor in front of the Horse, she began to draw. Her hand moved, knowing by itself what to do, and on the paper in front of her Jinny saw her dream take shape—the peat hags sprouting their dead crowns of withered reeds, the black water and the metal sky, tight and suffocating as a killing bottle being pressed down on top of her. Then her fingers found the orange and red and yellow pastels—the fire colours—and the grey sky glowed with the coming of the Horse.
On the next sheet, Jinny’s hand drew herself and Shantih struggling to escape from the black peat bog, the sky above them burning, molten.
On the third sheet of paper the Red Horse reared over the horizon, red-gold, burning, seeking. Its head was flung upwards, forelock blown back in the burning winds, yellow eyes flaming, as it searched for the thing it had come to find.
Kneeling on the floor, Jinny waited, unable to move. The pictures she had drawn held her captive.
Voices came from below. A woman’s voice, loud and brisk, and then her father’s voice shouting her name. Unmoving, Jinny swam towards the sound. She heard her father’s footsteps coming along the landing and stopping at the foot of her stairs.
“Jinny! Jinny!” he called. “Come down. Miss Tuke is here to see you.”
Jinny struggled to her feet. For seconds, the power of the Red Horse still held her—and then she broke free. She scrabbled the drawings of her dream together and hid them under the pile of drawings she was going to take to Nell Storr’s shop.
“Jinny, are you up there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” Jinny yelled back, and she went pounding downstairs to her father.
“What’s Miss Tuke doing here?” she demanded. “Did you phone her? Did you?”
“No,” said Mr. Manders. “I did not. You know I wouldn’t have done that without asking you first.”
“Well, why is she here?”
“To find out what trekking ponies we need for the winter. But now she is here we may as well take advantage of the opportunity and ask her about Shantih?”
“No,” said Jinny.
“Only ask. There is no point in going on arguing about whether Shantih is to go to Miss Tuke’s or not when Miss Tuke may not even be willing to take her.”
Jinny followed her father down to the kitchen where Miss Tuke was sitting at their huge oak table having a cup of tea with Mrs. Manders.
“Didn’t you hear us calling you?” asked Mrs. Manders.
Jinny shook her head.
“What were you doing?”
“Drawings,” said Jinny. “To sell to Nell Storr.” She didn’t mention the Red Horse, how it had come out of the painting, making her draw her dreams, how it was still there on the edge of her mind, always there, waiting.
“Want to see you about ponies,” said Miss Tuke. “Your mum tells me you won’t be needing one. Off to Duninver to the school hostel. Quite a change from battling against the gales on Bramble. I hear it’s utter luxury.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Jinny.
“Who is going to look after that mad Arab while you are away?”
“It’s rather a problem,” said Mr. Manders. “In fact, we were going to get in touch with you and see if you might consider taking her for the winter?”
“Were you?” said Miss Tuke. “Now that’s a thought. I always do stable one or two of my favourite Highlands so I have something to ride when the trekking is over. I was going to hang on to Shona this year, but I’ve had rather a tempting offer from a family who trekked with me for a fortnight and fell for her in a big way. Might be rather fun to have something like Shantih. Never had much time for Arabs. Fidgety beasts. But for a few months … ”
Jinny didn’t look up. She picked at the corner of the table, scowling.
“Of course I’d pay something towards her keep. We can’t manage to look after her here when Jinny is away, so we would be most grateful.”
“What has Jinny to say about it?” asked Miss Tuke.
“It’s not going to happen. I’m not going to Duninver.”
Jinny felt her parents and Miss Tuke smiling at each other, being adult and sensible.
“Wouldn’t do the mare any harm to spend a month or two with a stronger rider,” said Miss Tuke. “From what I’ve seen and heard of her, she has a will of her own. Gets the better of you more than sometimes.”
“Not now,” stated Jinny. “That’s past. I’m teaching her to jump now.”
“Would you consider it?” Mr. Manders asked.
“Could I have a ride on her? I’ve an hour to spare. My trekkers are morning and evening today.”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Manders. “O.K., Jinny?”
And somehow they were all out of the house and walking down the path to Shantih’s field. Shantih looked up from her grazing, nostrils flurrying a welcome, and came towards them with her exact, precise step. Jinny slipped the halter over her ears and led her back towards the stables.
“Hoy. Hi there,” called voices, and across the fields came Sue, trotting on Pippen, and Mrs. Horton running behind her.
“Gosh me,” exclaimed Mrs. Horton, out of breath as she caught up with them. “Need to do something about this flab.”
“Oh, Mummy!” said Sue.
“All right for you young things. Wait till you’re my age. It creeps up on you.” Mrs. Manders said she knew how it felt and that she too was being crept up on.
“A few weeks’ trekking and you’d soon be fit again,” said Miss Tuke.
“That’s what we want to see you about,” Mrs. Horton said. “We saw you drive past in your van. Pine Trekking Centre?”
“That’s me,” said Miss Tuke.
“Could we trek for a day this week?”
“Certainly. How would Thursday suit?”
“Very well. My husband and I haven’t done any riding before, but with Sue having Pippen we’re into horses, as they say, and we thought that before we go home this year we would have a shot at riding them.”
“That’s the spirit,” encouraged Miss Tuke. “Two on Thursday. Full day trek.”
“Three,” corrected Mrs. Horton. “Sue is coming too. And Jinny?”
“It’s too expensive,” said Jinny. “I can’t afford it.”
“Jinny can ride Bramble,” said Miss Tuke. “We’ll call it a reunion. No charge.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have time … ” Jinny said, but no one was listening to her. They all took it for granted that she would go. Jinny supposed that it would be nice to see Bramble again.
“Thursday, then,” said Mrs. Horton. “That’s a definite booking. Hail or snow, we will be there.”
Mrs. Manders, Mr. Manders and Mrs. Horton went back to Finmory while Jinny saddled up Shantih. Miss Tuke gathered up her reins and mounted. Her toe dug into Shantih, making the Arab spring away from her.
“Stand, you twister,” bawled Miss Tuke as she struggled into the saddle. Her hands clutched at the reins, making Shantih fling her head into the air and Jinny wince.
“Tell you one thing,” Miss Tuke shouted to them. “If I take her she’ll stand to be mounted before I’ve finished with her. Never had a Highland yet that didn’t learn that lesson. You couldn’t have trekkers behaving like this.”
Jinny wanted to shout back that it had been Miss Tuke’s toe digging into her side that had made Shantih spring away, but, before she had time to reply, Miss Tuke was riding Shantih round the field.
Sue, Pippen and Jinny watched from the field gate, Pippen resting his blubber chin on the top bar, half closing his eyes.
When Miss Tuke trotted, she banged up and down on Shantih’s back, her hands clamped heavily on the reins, her solid legs tight against Shantih’s sides. There was no sweetness in her riding, no feeling for her horse. Miss Tuke might as well have been driving a tractor.
“All right to canter?” bawled Miss Tuke.
“Yes,” said Jinny, because there was nothing else she could say.
Miss Tuke kicked Shantih into a canter, but instantly her hands pulled on Shantih’s reins to slow her down again. Shantih battered round the field at a ragged, unbalanced trot.
“Canter, you idiot,” yelled Miss Tuke, scarlet in the face as she held Shantih’s mouth in a stranglehold and kicked her Wellington boots into Shantih’s sides.
“She’s not much of a rider,” whispered Sue. “But she wouldn’t be scared of Shantih.”
Jinny had turned away. She couldn’t bear to watch any longer.
“She’d ruin her,” said Jinny bitterly.
“Of course, we’ll need to discuss details,” said Miss Tuke when she dismounted, “but if you do want me to take her I’d be quite willing to consider it. We’d have some good rides wouldn’t we, old girl? Soon get some sense into your noddle.” Miss Tuke clapped Shantih’s neck with her broad, capable hand. “Must be off. See you both on Thursday.”
“Come for a ride,” suggested Sue, when Miss Tuke had driven away.
“Where to?”
“Over the moors?”
Jinny glanced quickly up at the moors. They stretched, flaxen, bronze and purple, to the far mountains. The afterglow had faded from the sky. Light came from the rust gold bracken.
“Let’s jump,” said Jinny. “In the field.”
“Oh no. Come for a ride.”
“I want to jump.”
“If you jump Shantih much more over those same jumps you’ll sicken her for life.”
“Won’t.”
“Well, I’m going for a ride.” Sue turned Pippen and began to ride towards the moors.
For a moment Jinny hesitated, wanting Sue’s company, wanting to be chatting and laughing together, the way it had been at the beginning of the holidays. Almost, she called to Sue to wait. almost, she sent Shantih trotting after them. But she didn’t. She watched Pippen’s skewbald quarters and Sue’s straight, square-set back climb towards the moors, then she rode Shantih to the field where the jumps were.
Seeing the jumps, Shantih began to prance with excitement, tossing her head and clinking her bit. Jinny leaned her weight forward in the saddle, her knees tight, her feet braced against the stirrups, and Shantih surged forward. She soared over the jumps, her forelegs tucked in, close to her body, forelock blown back, her face hollowed by her speed, her eyes alight.
“Again,” whispered Jinny.
She didn’t want Shantih to stop. Wanted her to go on jumping, on and on. It was only when she was jumping Shantih, absorbed in the thrill of her pounding hooves and soaring leaps that Jinny felt safe, that she was able to forget the Red Horse. All the rest of the time it was there, haunting the edges of her mind, waiting for her to fall asleep so that it could come, brazen and terrible, charging into her dreams.